I can't figure out what I'm doing in gameplanning - seem to be getting worse the more I experiment. Is anyone willing to go through their approach from an overview perspective either in this forum or sitemail?

I have not played this in a number of years.

I began by seeing that Pro-Set and 3-4 looked to be the most popular formations. I have been playing with 4-3 because I am a fossil apparently that remembers if you had the dominant d-line you won pretty much every game. Pro-Set and 4-3 worked ok, I felt like I was mostly winning games I should win, losing games I should lose.

Started playing around with formations and settings, remembering my approaches that were successful before. ND Box was dominant in run game and then you could pass out of it well in a short/medium game to TEs and RBs because you had to load up against the run. Trips you could run a balanced offense since you could get good matchups with TEs and RBs.

It seems like general preferences have shifted towards passing and pass defense. Wanted to see if I could run the ball to take advantage of it, but way too many negative plays that kill drives. Difficult to keep any drives going because so many incompletions. Passing short and medium seem useless now because the upside is a 5 yard pass, but the negatives are sacks, INTs, incompletions, short scrambles. On defense, I've varied between aggressive and conservative, but the challenge is I struggle to get an offense to 3rd down because their conversion rate on 1st down is so high.

I feel I've had enough different types of matchups with different teams to develop patterns.

All of that leads to the question - is Pro-Set and I-Form really the best offense to run and the other formations give highly varied results? If you run a different formation - how did you come to take advantage of the matchups in the formations unlike me who gets worse with every deviation away from Pro-Set?

Any commentary is helpful as I am enjoying recruiting like I used to, but if I can't figure out how to get talent to perform at least at an average level, I should just stop playing. I don't have much I can offer you in return other than goodwill and maybe recruiting theory depending on if you're already an advanced player?

Thanks

From my limited experience, if you don’t have the players to execute, the formation/aggressiveness doesn’t matter much.

Ive lost to SIMs in Camp because the team I took over was dead last in GUESS.

On the other hand, my team in Heisman is rolling since I took over a Top 15 squad.


It seems like it’s still the same from when I used to play years ago, just a little more depth to it.

You are in 1A. I am surprised you need help.
I don't mean this as a put down or insult. Just genuinely surprised.
I will say when I gameplan, I just think what I want to do on a certain down/situation and then use the customized formation that works best for that.
For ex, playing vs team that runs 80 percent of time. 3rd and 2 for opposition. My D is 3-4. So I may use a 3-4 where I play all 4 lb's on the line and 80 percent run.
Gameplanning is just logic. Think - what do I want to do using the formations you use and how do I do it ? Then do it.

I just use the 4-3 defense all downs, no matter the situation. The only way I switch up the defense is to play against the run or pass.

The offense is a bit more complicated. But you can keep it very simple and still be very successful. Feel free to sitemail me, tcochran.

I haven't been around for very long (though I did play a few seasons like 10 years ago), but here are some of the ideas I've used that I think worked well:

• Trips formation is my favorite. It's meant to be a passing formation, but you still have your running back in it so you can run on teams that expect you to pass from Trips.
• I have a few different playbooks I switch between, for offense and defense. Mainly a Pass one, a Run one, and a "flavor of the week" for teams with unique strategies. I keep my formations the same for all the playbooks. Just set them up to resemble normal football and change the pass/run balance in the playbooks.
• Scouting! It sounds like your roster just isn't very good yet (same here), so until they're good enough that you can do whatever you want, scouting will be your best friend. I like the Stats tab on the opponent's team page. Against user teams, I also open one of their games against an opponent similar to me, and see what they did in the extended play by play (this will tell you if they run pass or run defenses, if they blitz, if they cover long/medium/short, how deep they like to throw, etc). Once you know the opponents' tendencies, switch your playbooks accordingly.
• This is probably the most bizarre thing I do; I don't know how much it helps but theoretically it should work. I use the Optional 1/2/3 game plans on offense, with the same playbook as Main, to cover winning/tied/losing with 15 minutes left in the half. If I'm playing a really good team, I run clock (fewer possessions equals more randomness and a better chance of me winning). If I'm playing a really bad team, I conserve clock (more possessions means the score will level out to where it should be and I will probably win).

Recruit the other teams into submission.

My two cents:

I play 4-3/ Nickel and 100% Wishbone and just won a NC with it at 1-AA (1-A is still a freaking mystery given the elites set up). I have learned that unlike the great HarrisWb, this game favor passing over running. However, balance is generally the key.

I spend 20 min on each D and O PLUS 20 min on ST. Why? Because ST are 1/3 of the game. I also throw out of the wishbone about 40-50% of the time. Since I rarely throw to my TE (who blocks and provides more time for my QB), I will throw a lot to my 3 RBs.

As for Game planning, I am fairly simple. 0 to 3 yards is short, 3 to 10 is medium, 11 and up is long.

I know folks around here will tell you that fatigue doesn't matter, I think it does. I rotate players at 95%, which means I play a lot of players (good for development), but that single stud RB you currently have is only going to get 10-15 carries a game. Before the howlers come out, yes I know you can set it to 100% RB 1, but that's not the point.

If I am playing the high powered offense of thegruntboy for example who throws 99% of the time, I will use nickel 100% and then change the setting of one of my LBs to either make a 5-1-5 formation for short yardage (and then choose to rush 4 or 5) or the more standard, rush 4 and cover 7. The inverse is true if I were playing a 100% running team. I would run my 4-3 set and "walk an LB or two" to the line and have a standard 6-1-4 formation with one of them blitzing. In that scenario, my FASTEST OLB plays MLB and my MLB's are walked up.

The key is FORMATION building and usage. I have EIGHT different wishbone formations that I use on my game plan. Example, All run, blowout, 3 out (FB and TE block), 4 out, 5 out, 5 out long, etc....then you fit the personnel and the situation (down/distance, etc) to the plan. My FR QB generally plays under the 100% run playbook. My more experienced QBs will play in the run/pass portion.

Oh yeah and one other thing. RECRUIT well. It doesn't matter if you are Vince Lombardi, any amount of game planning is not going to help if the roster sucks(unless you are GT Deuce and then all bets are off). To put it in perspective about 90% of my roster plays every game. No place to hide bad recruiting there.

Hope that helps a little bit.

Namaste.